Finally, the socialism of Jesus, if we may so much as use the word, was the reverse of the socialism of to-day. The absurd dream of our modern Utopia-makers is to impoverish the rich in order to enrich the poor and establish an equality of fortune which will make everybody comfortable. Jesus preached equality in abnegation and poverty for all men. While with many of our contemporary socialists. the object is to become rich, have possessions, enjoy, his was to become poor, empty oneself, suffer, yes, suffer; for in his view happiness consists in submission to the Father's will, humility of spirit is the true greatness, and oneness in suffering the true equality, the only equality possible, the only equality to be desired.

CHAPTER VIII

JOURNEYS TO JERUSALEM

EVERY year Jesus made several obligatory journeys to Jerusalem. He had always made them; he had thus been able a long time back to form an opinion concerning the Sadducees, the Temple, and the worship which was celebrated there. We believe that his convictions in this respect date at latest from the time immediately preceding his entrance upon his ministry.

Like every true Pharisee and every serious Essene, he had separated himself from Sadduceeism. Nevertheless he had retained a hope of succeeding even with the Sadducees; and it seems to us certain that before deciding upon Capernaum, on the border of the lake, he had tried to make himself known in Jerusalem.

It is easy to understand that the capital would particularly attract him, and that he did not resolve to shut himself up in the narrow canton of Galilee until he had

failed in the centre itself; he could not lose the hope of being one day welcomed in that place, for no success would be final for his purpose except as he should succeed in the Holy City. Jerusalem was what he needed to conquer; and when she was gained, the rest of the country would soon be his. Therefore he did not settle upon the lake shore until Jerusalem had been closed to him.

It is true that the traditional Gospels know only the ministry in Galilee, with the exception of the last week; but the Gospel of St. John has preserved for us the very clear memory of several undertakings of Jesus at Jerusalem, most of them in the early part of his ministry, precisely at the time when the desire to speak and act at the very centre of the nation would naturally be in his heart. Everything, therefore, leads us to believe that the indications of the fourth Gospel are in this respect, as in others, entirely historical. Jesus began his work, not in Galilee, but in Jerusalem; and this is one of the many touches which reveal the eyewitness revising the errors of the synoptical tradition.

It is again remarkable that John places the purification of the Temple at its true date. It was an act of inauguration; and the first three Gospels, which know only of a single journey to Jerusalem, although they insist upon several,1 are forced to place the purification of the Temple in this single visit, and relegate it to the last week, to a time which is highly improbable.2

In one of his early journeys to Jerusalem, long before all that ministry in Galilee which we have already narrated, Jesus had driven the merchants from the Temple, because, like every true Pharisee and every true Essene, he was outraged by the profanation of the sanctuary.

He expelled the sellers in the Temple court because they had no right there; he desired them to install themselves outside the doors. Their presence in the Court of

1 Matt. xxiii. 37. Observe particularly the word ποσάκις.

2 I say nothing of the singular opinion of those who believe in two purifications of the Temple, - one at the opening, the other at the close of Jesus' ministry,that weak invention of the harmonists who, in spite of their protestations, are the slaves of their invincible belief in the infallibility of the Bible.

the Gentiles was an insult to God; they changed "a house of prayer" into a "den of thieves."

He

Moreover, we are permitted to suppose that Jesus did not simply object to the fact that they were installed in one place and not in another, but that up to a certain point he objected to their presence itself. It is certain that, save the Paschal lamb (the patriotic and family feast, which he greatly prized), Jesus seems never to have offered a sacrifice in the Temple. loved to recall the word of Jehovah in Hosea, saying, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." Besides, sacrifices had fallen into discredit. None of the Jews "of the Dispersion" offered or could offer them. These were none the less pious for that, none the less devoted to the Law, none the less thoroughly true Jews. Jesus acted in the character of a liberal Jew, an antiSadducean Pharisee, when he drove the merchants out of the Temple; and this act was certainly approved by the Pharisees, at the same time that it brought him under the disapproval of the official authorities. But in performing it and in opposing sacrifices, Jesus only carried out the